"Being Real"

A very long time ago, I once read a book by a man who had lived in Japan during its economic "bubble" era. This was back in the days when Americans were freaking out because the Japanese were buying up their real estate and works of art. Local governments in Japan had so much money that some of them purchased gold-plated statues for their municipalities. It was an age that the Japanese felt smug and superior about, and thought would never end.

Eventually, the bubble deflated and Japan entered a long and slow decline. People started to forget that it was ever that much of a threat and eyes turned toward China as the next looming economic powerhouse. The book I read, called Japan: It's Not All Raw Fish, is as outdated as the idea that the Japanese were going to take over the world. However, I have never forgotten something that was mentioned in the preface as I am continually reminded of it as I go about my days in America. An old Japanese lady said something to the effect that Americans felt their opinions were facts. She was absolutely right, though she certainly would have gone further in expanding on that had she known Americans even better.

One of my frustrations as someone who was repatriated after 23 years of life abroad has been the limited scope of most American lives. Not only do they tend to live in little bubbles existences, and this applies even when they travel for tourism, but they are absolutely certain that their limited worldview is the only correct one and that it is a very informed one at that. I have had more than one discussion with an American in which a person has asserted that "we don't know" something to be true when the truth is that he or she does not know something to be true because that information has not penetrated the bubble they've constructed around them. The attitude is often, 'if I don't know, it is not true or known by anyone.'

It has been equally the case that I have encountered people who apply the same arrogant assertions to many other situations. If I can't do it, then it can't be done by the average person. If I haven't experienced it, it does not happen. If I don't believe it, it does not exist. Even if someone has indeed done it, they immediately deny the veracity of the claim or they insist it is an outlier experience and therefore invalid as a general rule.

My most recent experience with this involved an exchange with a woman in an LDR who insisted that the parents of young folks in distance relationships couldn't understand how they could work because, when those old people grew up, they lacked the "tools" to conduct such a relationship. Since I had my relationship in 1987, I took issue with the idea that such tools were indeed insufficient to carry on such relationships. She snarkily insisted that she was right and asserted that she was just 'being real' by saying that people could not conduct LDRs without the benefits of instantaneous text communication and video chatting. That was what was "real". My experience was obviously an outlier because she couldn't imagine making a relationship work with the limits that I did. Her experience was the arbiter of "reality," and my experience bounced right off of her bubble rather than find its way in and become part of a new version of truth.

This attitude stunned me because she was adopting the exact same posture as all of the doubters who sit in judgment of LDRs. For them, they believe that an LDR can't be "real" because it is a requirement that you be in person. When they say distance relationships don't work, I'm sure they feel they are also "being real" by setting the bar at needing physical proximity because they couldn't have a relationship any other way. She set a bar as well. Hers was just having access to technology. She even said that she and her boyfriend could not have their LDR without those things. I wonder if this is an opinion that she has shared with her boyfriend. Hopefully, they are on the same page in this regard or someone could end up getting hurt.

I'm sure that the reason she got a bit uppity with me was that I said all that was necessary was commitment and dedication. The tools help, but ultimately I said that it was about what you put into it, not how you carried through with it. This idea was likely threatening to someone who felt her LDR would fail without the comforts and immediacy of all that cell phones and internet connections bring. She probably felt I was questioning her dedication and commitment, but the truth was that she was the one questioning it as a result of what I'd said as I knew nothing about her relationship until she made her assertions. If she couldn't make her relationship work without her necessary tools, then no one could... except for me, that freak outlier. It was that American attitude I've grow so tired of encountering rearing its head again.

People who were born before me suffered far greater difficulties of separation than I did in my LDR. Men went off to war and left their families behind. Their wives still loved them and they wrote very infrequently and constantly faced the threat of permanent loss. Diplomats and political figures traveled during times when sea voyages were common. John Adams adored his wife Abigail, but they endured huge separations—sometimes spanning over a year—as a result of his career. Love somehow maintained itself despite enormous obstacles and relationships remained intact. That is what I'm talking about when I say that it takes devotion and commitment and is not dependent on the tools at your disposal. It's about a shared perspective that you have a connection and do whatever you can to maintain it, not about how you do it.

I wouldn't recommend that anyone pursue an LDR lightly and I certainly wouldn't recommend ignoring every possible tool at ones disposal to ease the difficulty. However, I will say that, if you can't have the relationship without a particular type of communication, then it's time to think about what your relationship is all about. Absence is supposed to make the heart grow fonder, not make it grow bored, cool-hearted, and restless.

Perhaps this is an "evolution" of relationships based on the modern age. That's the same age that has dramatically reduced our attention spans and decreased our distress tolerance until we've all turned into stimulation junkies who can't bear any deviation from our expectations. It's what has us following Twitter and screaming at a barista who puts one too few squirts in our vanilla latte. Perhaps I was a freak outlier, but I have some confidence that some people are made of similarly devoted stuff when it comes to their LDRs, though I'm guess that "being real" girl is not among them.